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"Don't you ever get tired of pairing up those Badlanders?" some people say. "Don't you know that twin ideas can just happen?" protest the defensive ones.
Sure I know that, I say that, and sure sometimes I'd rather have an ice-lolly than make another Badland pair... But then again there are other times when I just roll my eyes and wonder who was the lazy-ass bastard to fall so deep into demo-love that you can hardly tell the copy apart from the original.

Running shoes and cranberry juice. Who would have thought they had something in common. According to both Reebox (a.k.a. RBX) and Oceanspray the reasons for working out and eating right apparently all come down to one thing, getting into your skinny jeans.

The same idea sells two different cars on two sides of the pond. Watch American Toyota versus British Volkswagen. Adgrunt Kgeiger spotted these, where both cars are so inexpensive the owners think they got a great deal through a mistake. The question is who is the cheap one?

Media Guardian reports that the Marmite "Love it or Hate it" Blob spot was pulled from kids' TV. The ad, created by DDB London, spoofs the classic 1950s sci-fi horror film The Blob has been banned from kids' TV and TV shows kids' might be viewing (like Pop Idol) because it gave children nightmares. And it terrified two- and three-year-olds into refusing to watch television, the Advertising Standards Authority said.

The ad shows a large blob of Marmite squelching its way through the center of a busy main street, with some who try to out run it and others who happily run towards it and dive in head first. The ad can be viewed here at Marmite's web site.

When it first appered in Italy last month the city of Milan didn't take too long to ban the poster from appearing there. Now that the campaign reached France the Catholic Church there sprung into action at once and took the offending ad to court. The judge ruled that the ad was "a gratuitous and aggressive act of intrusion on people's innermost beliefs". The prosecuting lawyer agreed: "Tomorrow, Christ on the cross will be selling socks."

What the butterfly never learned is that the fastest way between point A and point B is in a straight line.
Seems that creatives have learned how to illustrate with that line between point A and point B. Here are two campaigns that rely on the same execution and idea, as the execution is the idea. One campaign is for tyres , the other for luxury cars.

Blackspots advertising campaign seems to be centered around getting banned, something that happens a lot to AdBusters ads actually, they have more than ten years of experience in getting ads refused from big networks. It's the reasons for not airing the ads that really crack us up though, the 15 second animated ads were rejected by the fux at FOX and the empty MTV because, as FOX put it, they are "too jumpy".

Who knew, jumpy is now too risque, and that's even without any breasts or nipples involved. Does FOX think the fuzzy animation has some strange hypnotic powers beyond advertisings usual persuasion?
Maybe they think it's like that video in the Japanese horror flick "Ringu" and it has special powers...... Read more to see the "jumpy" animation.

Fans of Badland know that sometimes, twin ideas just happen. Blame it on syncronicity, similar thought patterns, the idea Gods or aliens, or just a bad-idea-day, no one knows exactly why it happens... But we do know that it does. Read more to see three very original stolen jeans ideas from three different countries all appearing independent of each other.

When the movie Swingers was released in 1996 the script and the story brought out the best from the actors in it and propelled them all to big time Hollywood fame. One hilarious scene in Swingers was when Jon Favreau's character "Mike" leaves increasingly pathetic messages on "Nikki's" answering machine, as the machine keeps cutting him off. (scene here). Mastercard has just released a commercial where the scene is nearly identical, right down to the character's names, Mike and Nikki. Tut tut McCann-Erickson, did you really think the world wouldn't notice? Is this an intentional homage (considering the names) or just a lazy rip-off? You decide.Super adgrunts view the ad in the commercial archive

If you live in the United States and have your television hooked up to something besides a rabbit-ear antenna, chances are you've seen a few thousand horrid commercials over the last month or so for a cell phone ringtone/wallpaper service called Jamster.

Well, this weekend I had the ol' boob tube on one of the networks appropriate for my demographic when a new spot for this company came on. Now, usually I've reacted with a scream of anguish whilst simultaneously curling up into the fetal position, but somehow... in some way... this Jamster spot was different.